Page:The Autobiography of an Indian Princess.djvu/57

Rh race had been founded by the love of a god and a maiden, and through successive ages strife and love have been associated with the dynasty of Cooch Behar, whose chiefs are always great rulers, great lovers, and great fighters.

The first wish of the Government was to prevent any palace interference with the baby Maharajah's upbringing. When his father, the late Maharajah, was a ward of the Government, the Maharanis had been very hostile to the idea of a foreign education, and similar opposition was what the Government now wanted to avoid. Therefore, for this and other private reasons which can easily be understood when it is remembered that the late Maharajah left many wives, the Maharajah was removed, when he was five years old, to the Wards' institution at Benares, near which the members of the Cooch Behar Raj family lived in several houses known as the Cooch Behar Palace.

When he was eleven, the Government removed him from Benares to Patna, where he became a student at Government College, and Colonel Haughton's anxious instructions to Babu Kasi Kanto Muker ji, who was in charge of the boy, were "to watch over his conduct and the management of the household: to see that strangers and unauthorised persons have no access to them: and generally to discharge such duties with regard to him as a good parent is bound to do."

In 1872 Mr. St. John Kneller became his tutor